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Child & Family Studies

Our child and family studies program will give you the professional preparation you need in the working world, along with the knowledge to evaluate and understand children, families, their diverse relationships, and human development in a range of settings.

If you are creative, flexible, resourceful, able to work well with others, have a positive attitude, and want to spend your life helping others, child and family studies is the program for you.

The child and family studies program focuses on various stages of human growth and development over the lifespan, families in society, diverse relationships within families, human sexuality, family resource management, parenting and family law and public policy. You’ll be trained to integrate your knowledge of child/adolescent development, adult life stages and human relations into a service-oriented career.

As a child and family studies major, you will learn:

problem solving,

organizational skills,

research skills,

communication skills,

professional writing skills,

curriculum planning skills, and

grant writing skills

Internships & Experiential Learning

The required internship is a cornerstone of your child and family studies education. Internships help you gain the practical and on-the-ground experience you need to jump-start your career.

Every semester over 100 internship sites—mostly non-profit organizations and governmental agencies—are invited to recruit child and family studies interns. The internship sites often hire our graduates, if positions are available, and sometimes positions are created for the graduates.

We also make sure our students have other experiential learning experience before graduation. Our students work with the Early Childhood Laboratory, which has served the children of faculty, staff, and community for 40 years. In the lab, our child and family studies students learn about the needs of their young charges and develop and carry out curricula for the children who attend.

Our program is also designed so you can become a certified family life educator faster through the National Council on Family Relations’ abbreviated application process. Learn more about the courses you need for the NCFR application.

If you’d like to know more about becoming a family life educator, visit the NCFR website or contact us — 75% of our faculty hold certified family life educator credentials.